Yes, You Can Go on an African Vacation with Your Kids

One day last winter, my 12-year-old stepson was learning about Africa in his sixth-grade social studies class when he came home and announced that he’d like to visit Chad. “Or Sierra Leone!” This is a kid who never wants to go anywhere, despite having parents who love to travel (or maybe that’s exactly why). I let him know that Chad was probably out, at least for this summer. But Africa was an interesting thought—a departure, for sure, from our usual summer vacations spent exploring the hiking trails, beaches, and lakes within driving distance from our home north of Boston.

There were some considerations to make though. Age. (Was 12 too young?) General level of adventurousness. (See: Never wants to go anywhere.) Time. (We would only have nine days, including travel.) Cost, of course, was a factor, too. Africa doesn’t have to be over the top, but for most families it’s an investment, and we wanted ours to be a smart one.

Once we suggested Africa as a real possibility, N. backtracked a bit. He’d never been out of the country aside from a few trips to Canada (and not even French Canada) and, like many kids, he is a proudly picky eater who loves routine and TV. He also had some understandable concerns about the security of roll-down canvas walls. And yet from our perspective, 12 was something of a sweet spot: still young enough to be impressionable but old enough to listen to direction and keep it together when required. It offered a freedom—from sports and friends and teenage angst—we didn’t see lasting for much longer. Twelve was also economical: Many lodges throughout Africa welcome guests 12 and under at a rate reduced by as much as 75 percent.

Many lodges throughout Africa welcome guests 12 and under at a rate reduced by as much as 75 percent.

We also suspected that—despite his trepidations—chances were good an African vacation would be a lot more relatable than if we’d decided to take him abroad for the first time to, say, Europe. He’d covered a lot of the continent’s geography and wildlife in school. We could choose from a number of countries and signs, menus, and conversations would be in English. And as a family, we could pretty much all agree on nature, animals, and a little bit of physical activity.

I worked with New York-based travel planners Epic Road to choose a destination, quickly landing on Namibia for its safety, accessibility (via two fairly easy direct flights: Boston to Frankfurt, then Frankfurt to Windhoek), manageable size, and relative affordability to tour by private plane. This would let us hit four geographically diverse destinations and cover more than 1,200 miles in our short time. We’d do the classic safari with the chance to see elephants, rhinos, giraffes, and the big cats, of course, but we’d also get plenty of time outside of the Land Rover, at destinations and lodges that offered hikes and nature walks, community visits, quad biking over giant sand dunes, and kayaking with seals. Plus, during the country’s winter months, most of Namibia is malaria-free.

Our itinerary was kid-minded without being overly so; the point wasn’t to recreate Disney World in Africa (N. wasn't much of a Disney fan, anyway). We worked to choose lodges that welcomed families, and felt special and intimate, but which didn’t exist to cater to kids. At Wolwedans Dunes Lodge in the NamibRand Reserve, N. had to navigate a menu that wasn’t particularly kid-friendly; at Okahirongo Elephant Lodge in the remote northwest Kunene region, his room was separated from ours by an outdoor walkway and the infinite possibility of creatures one might encounter in the dark. Wi-Fi everywhere was slow, at best. There was the occasional cold shower.

But in those slightly less comfortable moments, there was, of course, discovery. Ostrich is tasty. Dung beetles are furry, and sort of cute. You didn’t see any kids who belonged to the Himba indigenous groups older than five because they were out working—think about that the next time you moan about emptying the dishwasher. On an outing meant to track the Kunene region’s rare desert-adapted elephants, he found himself even more delighted to see flocks of ostrich and groups of baboons (a “congress,” he called it). The fear of “dying by small aircraft,” meanwhile, that N. had suddenly expressed in the weeks before our trip vanished thanks to Johan, the 27-year-old pilot-guide who fit in so well with our family that, by the end, we could not have imagined traveling without him.

In fact, the part of the trip we had safely assumed would be the highlight—safari at Onguma the Fort, a private game reserve with a sizable leopard and cheetah population that’s a quick five-minute drive to the eastern border of Etosha National Park—was no more spectacular than anything that had come before it. To be sure, it was wonderful: Onguma had the most kid-adaptable menu, highly comfortable (and solid-walled) rooms, a back deck that overlooked a watering hole where warthogs and zebra splashed all day long, and a talented guide who helped N. capture the rhino photo he’d been waiting all week to take. But by then, we’d lived a lot.